Summer is the season of optimism in the NFL.

Every player is in “the best shape of their life.”

Every question mark hovering over a team is answered by a sparkling play or two in the preseason.

Everyone is undefeated.

It often goes down as a bunch of malarkey once the regular season kicks off.

For the New York Jets, summer optimism is even more difficult to buy into than any other franchise. The team has gone 15 straight years without converting training camp buzz into a playoff appearance.

At this point, it is understandably challenging for Jets fans to buy into any of the dreams that the team tries to sell them in August.

However, the Jets have had a unique summer by their own standards. August has been shockingly drama-free compared to the media circus that usually rolls through Florham Park around this time of year.

The question is whether New York’s unusually boring summer has been enough to convince drama-weary Jets fans that things will be different this time around.

I shared a poll on X/Twitter asking Jets fans how much their confidence in the Jets being able to win 8+ games (the bar to achieve their best win total in 11 years) has changed since the start of training camp. As of this writing, the results were as follows:

  • Improved significantly: 14%
  • Improved slightly: 49%
  • Unmoved: 35%
  • Decreased: 2%

That’s more optimism than I expected.

More than three out of every five voters admitted that their confidence in a potential eight-win Jets season has at least slightly increased since the start of training camp. Most of those fans stopped at “slight” improvement rather than “significant”, but there was still a small contingent that felt incredibly moved by what they’ve seen over the last few months.

A brutally honest segment of the voters, representing slightly over one-third of the bunch, were unwilling to say that their opinion on the team has changed at all since training camp began. Admittedly, these are likely the wisest folks in the land.

Interestingly, though, almost no voters said that their confidence has decreased since the start of training camp, which says a lot about how smoothly the summer has gone for New York.

Where do you stand on the Jets’ prospects of being squeezed into the “In The Hunt” graphic in late December?